Bend It Like Bullard Read online

  Steady was based in Vale, Colorado, and I was soon on a plane out there alongside my family and Jason Palmer. Fulham were superb and covered all our expenses, they couldn’t have done any more.

  From everything I’d heard about Steady, I was really looking forward to seeing him, but our first meeting wasn’t quite what I was expecting.

  Steady works in two ways. He makes his judgements based on what he sees when he goes inside the knee during surgery and also on what he feels by touching the knee. I thought I was there for surgery so when, during our first meeting, he turned off the light in the room and began feeling my knee and the area all around it, I was gripped by a bit of panic and thought ‘Is this guy a bit of a weirdo or what?’

  Luckily, he was not. In fact, he was as good as he was cracked up to be and I couldn’t have been in better hands. Although I preferred it when the lights were on.

  But, without getting all Eileen Drewery, those lights being off did represent one of the darkest times in my career as I reached my lowest point after surgery.

  Steady used a pioneering new bleeding technique in which he reconnected the damaged ligaments to the bone by bleeding them into it instead of completely reconstructing the knee – unfortunately, I became something of a knee expert myself over the next few years. Even today, I could probably give Steady a run for his money.

  I had to undergo two surgical procedures three months apart and each time that meant spending a few weeks in Colorado in rehab.

  The first operation was in September, straight after the injury. Soon after surgery, I was sitting with Luke, an Aussie physio who I got to know quite well, as we unwrapped the heavy bandaging on my knee.

  I had never seen a sight like it in my life.

  It was a horror show down there. My knee was five times its normal size, there was an enormous scar stretched right across it and it was bright, bright red. I was close to tears and said to Luke: ‘There’s no way I’m coming back from this.’

  ‘You will,’ he tried to assure me.

  ‘Not a chance,’ I said. ‘Look at the state of it.’

  And then, just at the point where I was feeling like throwing the towel in, a man hopped into the room walking on what looked like two paper-thin, artificial legs. It was as if he’d been sent there especially for me.

  ‘Have a look at him,’ said Luke.

  I was crying by now as I looked up and studied this bloke.

  ‘Fuck this,’ I thought as I watched the guy struggling to adjust to life with no legs. ‘What am I worried about? Even if I don’t play footy again, it might be really tough on me, but have a look at this bloke.’

  And that proved to be a huge turning point in my mental battle to make it back to the Premier League – or any league. From then on, whenever I was experiencing difficulty in my rehab I’d think about the man with no legs. He became my mantra. Him, and Jason’s ‘slice of bread’. I’ll explain.

  Jason, who went on to become Chelsea’s physio, was brilliant. He really helped me through some of the tough physical challenges. One of the most daunting aspects of the rehab was that Steady estimated I’d be playing again in about sixteen to eighteen months. That was just a monumental slice of my career gone and an inconceivable amount of time to wait to play.

  But Jason helped to break it down. I just wanted to run before I could walk but he encouraged me to think of the recovery process as if we were making a slice of bread, crumb by crumb. Every day the work I’d do in the pool or on the weights would add crumbs to the slice of bread. After a week or two, we’d have the corner of the bread, by the end of the month we’d have the top crust on and so on.

  Now I know I might sound like a total fruitcake with my slice of bread and man with no legs, but these are the things that kept me going and drove me to get back on a football pitch. Every weight my leg lifted I was thinking, or even saying, ‘Man with no legs, slice of bread’. It helped massively.

  It was especially valuable because it was tough to find inspiration in Vale, Colorado, where Steadman was based. The place was scenic, stunning and beautiful, but there wasn’t a hell of a lot to do. It’s a fantastic place to go skiing, for example, but skiing’s not so good if you only have one knee.

  Probably the most exciting thing to happen to me on my first trip there was the end of my constipation. Seriously.

  After the operation, I was given an unbelievable amount of tablets to stop the pain and help my recovery. They did the job, but they also did another job of completely clogging up my insides to the point where I just could not go to the toilet for days.

  One day, nature finally took its course and, without wishing to get too graphic, the whole world seemed to pour out of me and I completely blocked my hotel room toilet.

  Because I could hardly move, I had to ask poor Jason to come and help but every time he flushed the chain, all the water flowed over the top and out on to the floor. Hilarious, but a total nightmare as I ended up flooding the whole floor of the hotel and the manager had to come up to sort it out. It’s lucky I don’t really do embarrassment, or I’d have died of it.

  When I went back for the next part of the procedure three months later, it was just me and Jason as my family stayed at home. I was so bored by then that I was reading the hotel tourist information pamphlet, where I discovered that local fishing trips were available with a guide.

  This was an opportunity not to be missed so I hobbled along with Jason and we went trout fishing for the day. I even managed to catch a few little ones – Jan Porter would have been so proud.

  That was about as buzzing as it got out in Vale for me. Well that and doing my rehab with Owen Hargreaves.

  If I thought I had it bad over those few years, that poor sod had it far worse. Every time I went out to Colorado, Owen would always be plugging away in rehab, working his socks off to get fit again.

  He was a pretty quiet bloke and, apart from our hair, we didn’t have a whole lot in common, but we bonded over our German connection. Owen spent the first seven years of his pro career with Bayern Munich and could have played for Germany as he had residency rights, while I’m a quarter-German – my nan on one side is German – so Owen and I got used to each other’s different ways and he ended up helping me get through the rehab too.

  It was a long old process and there were plenty of times where I lost patience with it. When I was back at Fulham, I used to be in the gym Portakabin watching the boys training through the window and my heart wouldn’t be in the exercise regime anymore.

  A couple of times, I went to see Chris Coleman and explained that my head was gone and I needed some time off. He was absolutely brilliant about it and would always tell me to come back when I was ready.

  After a week or so, I was ready to go again and continued with Steady’s programme, which was all based on not doing anything which caused the knee pain. Instead, I spent about five or six months fixed up to a machine which moved the knee gently – I even had to wear it while I slept.

  Steady’s message was that if you felt any pain, you shouldn’t be doing it, but at the same time you have to work as hard as you can to get your knee moving. Which wasn’t necessarily a view shared by our nutter of a fitness instructor at Fulham, Steve Nance.

  Steve was a no-holds-barred, fifty-eight-year-old Australian former rugby coach. He was a proper animal, without doubt the craziest fitness coach I’ve ever worked with. If you thought you’d had enough, Steve had news for you – you’ve got another hour, boy. Even with my strict rehab programme, which he helped me through brilliantly, Steve would still insist on me doing things I wasn’t certain I should do.

  And he loved boxing. Once I was back playing again, he’d get the gloves out and we’d have one-on-one scraps right there in the physio room, where he’d throw jabs at you without a care in the world. Occasionally, blood was spilled and if you hit the old bloke back – as I sometimes did thanks to my boxing training as a kid – he’d just snarl and say ‘Come on boy!’ before digging you stra
ight on the nose for your trouble.

  Despite Steve and Jason’s best efforts, nine months on from my first operation I was still feeling unstable on my knee, which was worrying me so much that I thought I was going to have to hang my boots up.

  So I flew back out to Colorado again, said hello to Owen Hargreaves and saw Steady. This time he kept the lights on and asked me to remove my trousers.

  He took a long, hard look at my knee while I prayed it wasn’t going to be bad news. ‘Jim,’ he said. ‘Your leg is not big enough, you’ve not done enough work on it. The knee is strong now so go back and build your leg up.’

  And that was the last time my knee felt unstable (until the next serious injury, of course).

  I returned to Fulham, to Jason and Steve, and really crunched through my exercises when I got back. I had the bit between my teeth again. As I watched the boys training through the gym window, I was focused on joining them. I even used to go out to watch them for half-an-hour to spur me on and mad Steve would always be waiting for me when I got back, making sure I finished my exercises for the day.

  I brought in my own tunes to help motivate me while I was doing all my leg strengthening work. I could write a book on leg weights – a boring one, admittedly – because I had to do so much work to build up my strength again. But I was up for the challenge now, like a coiled spring, ready to explode into action. The slice of bread Jason and I had been making was almost ready to be buttered.

  After the longest sixteen months of my life, I was raring to go again – probably a bit too much as I had a fight with my team-mate Chris Baird in training just a few days before my comeback.

  I was pumped up and we had a little disagreement about something trivial. Words were exchanged between us, but it was pretty innocuous really as these things always are.

  Except while my back was turned, Baird approached from behind and gave me a dig right in the nose – an absolute liberty. I was livid and chased him round the training pitch while the gaffer, Roy Hodgson, tried to break it all up. It was all a little bit Benny Hill as I chased Baird and Roy chased the two of us trying to calm the situation – unfortunately, there were no sexy nurses chasing all of us. The whole incident was completely bonkers and one of those things that was soon forgotten about.

  A few days later, I was back in the changing room with the Fulham boys at Upton Park. Although I was only on the bench, it was an incredible feeling to finally experience a matchday atmosphere as a player again. I even got a taste of the action when I replaced Moritz Volz for the last fifteen minutes. I received a great reception from both sets of fans, which meant a lot.

  I followed that up with one half against Arsenal and then a crazy 120 minutes against Bristol Rovers in an FA Cup replay, which we lost on penalties. Despite the result, I felt great that night, back to my old self and Roy Hodgson heaped a shitload of praise on me after the game.

  After another away appearance at Bolton, I was finally ready to make my first home start for almost a year-and-a-half against Aston Villa and it couldn’t have gone any better. I enjoyed one of those dream games I used to read about in Roy of the Rovers – at least I would’ve read about it if my nose hadn’t been stuck in Angling Times.

  Not only did I get through another ninety minutes completely unscathed, but we claimed our first victory for three months and I scored the winner with a blinding twenty-five-yard free kick with five minutes to go. Now, that’s a comeback.

  The goal celebration was insane. I went even more mental than I normally do, if that’s possible. I was completely overwhelmed and still celebrating the goal at the final whistle. So much so, that I went up to the referee Chris Foy and, instead of shaking his hand like most players normally do, I gave him a celebratory hug.

  It was one of those moments where I just got carried away, but I knew Chris well as he used to train at Wigan occasionally. And he’d also been the ref when I got injured at Newcastle. It was an emotional moment and I just grabbed him and said: ‘Chrissy boy, come here you big bastard!’ and gave him a good old cuddle.

  Next up, I was interviewed by Geoff Shreeves live on Sky after the game. I was so pumped I was like a boxer who had just won a fight and then has a microphone stuck in his face so talks a load of nonsense because of all the adrenaline flying around.

  Never mind cloud nine, I was on cloud eleven or twelve. He asked me the first question about the goal and I just replied: ‘Alright Geoff, how are you?’

  He was interviewing me and I was asking him the questions.

  He looked at me as if to say, ‘You’re off your head, son’, and he was right. I was as high as a kite and started rambling into the mic.

  ‘Eighteen months out!’ I shouted to nobody in particular. ‘I’ve not been back playing for so long and I’ve scored the winner, Geoff.’

  He nodded.

  ‘Geoff! I’ve scored the winner!’

  I think the producers must have cut to an ad break because it was only a matter of time before I would’ve sworn or hugged him or something. Some of my mates said to me afterwards, ‘Er, Jim – that interview?’ But there was no way they would’ve understood what I was experiencing at the time.

  In my overexcited state after such a long time out, hugging the ref and losing the plot during a TV interview both seemed like perfectly normal things to do. And they still do. Because you have to make the most of it when the going’s good. And I’m glad I did because it wasn’t long before I was laid up again.

  Almost a year to the day after that Villa game, I made my debut for Hull City after a £5 million move – no pressure then.

  I was Hull’s record signing and they pulled out all the stops to make me their player, including a thorough medical with particular attention placed on my knee.

  I’d been playing without any problems for the previous year; in fact I was probably playing the best football of my career as I’d helped save Fulham from the drop and was then called up to the England squad at the start of the following season.

  I was desperate to make a good impression at Hull, who were enjoying their first Premier League season and had ambitions to stay there permanently, because they’d paid a lot of money for me and were paying me a load of cash as well.

  We were playing West Ham in an evening kick-off in late January and I’d been suffering from flu; it was that time of year where everyone picks something up. The gaffer Phil Brown asked me how I felt and I said I was really bogged down with it but agreed to go on the bench although I was probably only about twenty per cent fit.

  But by the time the game came along that night, the matchday adrenaline meant I’d soon forgotten all about the illness and was desperate to get on the pitch, especially as we were losing and I wanted to help.

  I got my chance early in the second half when I was sent on to replace Geovanni. It always takes a little while to catch up with the game when you come off the bench, but I was soon flying about all over the place and felt good.

  Scott Parker had moved to West Ham by that stage and we had a good old midfield scrap. He threw himself into a challenge, which I hurdled and glided along the grass as I landed. Given that it was January, the pitch was rock hard but wet, so gliding wasn’t a problem but I stopped abruptly and felt a sharp crunch in my right knee. That knee.

  ‘You’ve got to be kidding me,’ I thought.

  I felt no pain, which was reassuring, as was the Hull physio Simon Maltby, who came on to the pitch to check me out and told me I was fine to continue. I finished the game with no further problems, other than the fact that we lost, and I didn’t really think about my knee again.

  Until the following morning.

  I got out of bed the next day and fell straight over. Unless I’d been drinking in my sleep, there was something seriously wrong. I looked down at my knee and nearly fell over again. It had swelled up like a football, at least three times its normal size.

  Now and again, since the first operation, I used to get fluid on my knee, which was part and parc
el of the recovery process, but this was more like a bowl of soup on my knee.

  I rang Simon immediately and he told me to come straight in so he could have a look at it. I was close to breaking down again then and there. Without anyone examining me, I knew that I was facing another long stretch out of the game. I felt especially sick as this was the last thing the Hull chairman Paul Duffen needed after all the money the club had paid for me.

  He’d moved heaven and earth to get me up there only to see me crocked after thirty-seven minutes of action – not exactly value for money.

  Duffen and Phil Brown both came to see me after Simon had told me I needed a scan and I could see the genuine concern on their faces – they looked like I felt on the inside.

  I wanted to go out to Colorado and see Steady again but, given the circumstances, I couldn’t really expect Hull to foot the bill so I insisted on covering it. It was the least I could do and there was no way I was going to put my knee in anyone else’s hands.

  So off I went to Vale again with my family and another Hull physio, Liam McGarry, with all kinds of questions racing through my mind as Steady turned the lights out and felt my knee.

  How long was I going to be out for? Would I ever get back to my best? Would I ever play again? When was he going to turn the lights back on so it didn’t feel so spooky?

  Steady’s verdict was that the knee felt loose – I could’ve told him that myself with the lights on – and that it would need surgery to fix it. The anterior cruciate ligament had come away from the bone and needed sorting out.

  When he opened up my knee, he found that there was a ninety per cent tear of the ACL, much looser than he thought, which meant replacing my dodgy ligament with a dead man’s fully functioning ACL. I hoped he might use George Best’s, but no such luck.